Bridges and Silos
The "Silo Effect"
In our journey of creating Bridges for Life, we heard over and over from providers and community leaders, the word "silo". In the farming community, silos are used to keep grains separate, which is a good and productive practice. However, in the world of building community and helping families, silos are quite unproductive. Speaking with providers, we can hear the frustrations they often feel knowing that many of their services are not known or not supported as well as they should be.
We believe in the value that community organizations have to offer and we seek to build an interdependent network facilitating communication and partnering with one another in a way that will truly build community. More importantly, knowing that many families need support through multiple channels, the more that community providers can work together the bigger impact will be made.
Building the Bridge
The Foundation
Our relationship with community providers is as important as our relationship with the families we work with. As it relates to providers, our goals are:
1. Become aware and educated about any and all providers/organizations in our area offering services in any of our FIVE KEY AREAS.
2. Build strong relationships with providers through consistent communication empowering us to be well-informed of current services being offered.
3. Identify "Partner Providers". These are those organizations who truly share in our vision of uniting forces to affect change in our community.
The Supports
Bridges for Life and families both share a common ingredient needed to thrive - we need people. More specifically, we know that great support and success comes through people who have the compassion, and desire to help as well as the experience, training, education, programs, and/or products available to do so.
Within the Five Key Areas and within our community lies a treasure chest full of providers and organizations offering amazing support to families.
If you are a provider of any of the services listed below, please consider partnering with Bridges for Life.
1. Education Support
- Pre-K prep
- Special Needs
- Tutoring
- High School Diploma and GED
- Vocational training
- Local scholarship programs
- Local colleges
2. Physical Health
- Fitness and exercise
- Nutrition and wellness
- Basic need providers (food clothing, shelter)
- Transportation services
- Alternative Care providers
- Dental care
- Physician care
3. Mental Health
- Addiction treatment (tobacco, alcohol, illegal substances, prescription, etc.)
- Individual support groups
- Family support groups
- Faith community
- Grief Recovery
- Health crisis counseling
- Emotional illnesses
4. Personal Finance
- Employment Agencies
- Local businesses
- Job training programs
- Career training
- Tax preparation
- Banking services
- Debt management
- Legal services
- Insurance providers
- Investment services
- Mortgage providers
5. Interpersonal Relationships/Social Skills
- Marriage building services
- Parenting resources
- Blended family supports
- Anger management
- Life skills building (problem solving, conflict resolution, etc.)
The Path to the Other Side
Bridges for Life utilizes a hybrid of three different models of case management services to achieve our mission of strengthening families. Our level of interaction with families varies based, in part, on the family's readiness, willingness, and need.
Our process with families involve:
1) Meeting any basic and/or urgent needs,
2) Identifying and assessing family strengths and challenges,
3) Addressing any needs we can through direct interventions, and/or
4) Connecting families to community providers to address needs
A unique component of our program is our targeted neighborhood outreach initiative in which families are identified or nominated for our "Family Adoption" program. Through this program we are able to integrate ourselves deeply into the lives of some of our community's most at-risk families to offer intimate and long term support. Here, warm introductions are made to community providers with structured follow up as well as incentives for families' participation and success levels.
The Other Side
The expected final result of our interaction is change and a lot of it. We expect to not only see change at the individual and family level but change at a community level.
We believe as we leverage the strengths and resources our community has, mobilize people and organizations to band together, and invest in families, we can partner together to make landmark changes in our community.